Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    No Quit
    No Quit
    No Quit
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    No Quit

    By Clover Autrey

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Dead things should stay dead, right?
    Souls shouldn’t be plucked out and slammed into an alien body to fight an alien war. Nor should the dead rise during The Day of the Dead festival and wreck havoc on Cael and Jake in small town Arizona.

    This first collection of short stories by Bestselling Author Clover Autrey dodges dragons, ghosts, and aliens, and one monster fish with heroes that don’t know the word Quit.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherClover Autrey
    Release dateDec 27, 2014
    ISBN9781311182388
    No Quit
    Author

    Clover Autrey

    “Clover Autrey’s books are perfect for the time-constrained reader. They are a quick read jam-packed with action, adventure and emotion.” ...from a reader in Utah.Clover Autrey writes the kind of stories she loves to read, high fantasy and time travels with Scottish Highlanders or magical mermen and shapeshifters, with powerful elements of romance, where the hero and heroine must each make sacrifices to gain something even stronger. She is the author of the HIGHLAND SORCERY series and the ANOINTED series.Clover serves as the current president of the Keller Writers Association and is the past president for the North Texas Romance Writers of America. She is a frequent speaker at conferences and workshops.Inspired by her love of Louis L'Amour historical romantic heroes, Clover (yeah, that's her real name), packed up and moved to Texas where she found a real live Texan of her own. She's been there ever since where she and Pat (who else would a Clover marry but a Patrick?) listen to the coyotes howl at the trains each evening.Become one of Clover's LuckyCharmers for exclusive content and free books at http://www.subscribepage.com/luckycharmers

    Read more from Clover Autrey

    Related to No Quit

    Related ebooks

    Action & Adventure Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Trent Dalton On Heroes And Hope

      Sep 13, 2020

      THE HEROES NEVER changed form. Always flesh and blood; arms and legs and beating hearts as wide as this country. It was the villains who kept morphing on me. I once thought the bad guys all dressed like Darth Vader. Then I learned that the villains i

      8 min read

    • Article

      Elf Quest

      Nov 30, 2022

      Elf Quest
      11 min read

    • Article

      Magnets: Carried through time, lovers seek their purpose.

      Feb 6, 2014

      Moon Colony B, 2213 Former Ponzi-schemer Mary Pillar digs through a trashcan. It smells like rotten eggs and milk. She is elderly and homeless, living in an alley between two eco-efficient skyscrapers. Dust particles dance around her. She has lost ev

      11 min read

    • Article

      Quotients

      May 7, 2020

      Quotients
      8 min read

    • Article

      Playing God

      Apr 10, 2023

      After Jack was abducted by the alien spaceship, and after the round vessel had vanished into the Milky Way, he found himself walking down a tubular corridor with white vibrating walls, escorted by a sinuous blonde who smiled graciously and said her n

      13 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • Article

      Hellbent and Hydebound

      Oct 19, 2022

      Where Stevenson’s contemporaries explored specific tensions within the Victorian psyche, 'Jekyll and Hyde' pinned the split personality of the era to the page. The post Hellbent and Hydebound appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Slaying Monsters in Fiction

      Jan 23, 2018

      When a monstrous beast appears in a story, then it becomes, at least in part, what that story is about.  The post Slaying Monsters in Fiction appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Strange Times

      Aug 9, 2021

      Strange Times
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Prophet of Nothingness

      Sep 12, 2021

      The Prophet of Nothingness
      9 min read

    • Article

      Ode to Joy

      Mar 28, 2018

      Ode to Joy
      6 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Jan 4, 2024

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Surviving

      Nov 25, 2019

      Surviving
      10 min read

    • Article

      Horde Mode

      Jan 5, 2023

      Horde Mode
      6 min read

    • Article

      Judges

      Mar 10, 2024

      The doctors assured me the shrapnel in my leg would do no further harm if they “let sleeping dogs lie,” or at least less harm than trying to take it out would cause. “Hey,” I asked them. “What if it decides to cut its way out all on its own?” My grea

      12 min read

    • Article

      Hell on Earth

      Jan 14, 2022

      Hell on Earth
      3 min read

    • Article

      Top Villains

      Sep 16, 2021

      Top Villains
      5 min read

    • Article

      The William Trevor Reader: “Events at Drimaghleen”

      Jun 6, 2023

      This might actually win the award for the bleakest story in the 'Collected.' The post The William Trevor Reader: “Events at Drimaghleen” appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Summer Books Special!

      Dec 28, 2023

      Summer Books Special!
      9 min read

    • Article

      Robert C. Koehler: Death by nationalism?

      Oct 13, 2022

      The game may be almost over. Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies put it this way: “The irresolvable dilemma facing Western leaders is that this is a no-win situation. How can they militarily defeat Russia, when it possesses 6,000 nuclear warheads

      3 min read

    • Article

      Dead Reckoning

      Aug 19, 2021

      Dead Reckoning
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for No Quit

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      No Quit - Clover Autrey

      No Quit

      By Clover Autrey

      Copyright 2014 Clover Autrey

      Smashwords Edition

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Cover art Photos licensed from Dreamstime.

      All Rights Reserved

      ~~~

      Do Not Resuscitate

      First Published 2014

      Fishing

      First published in Deep in the Hearts of Texas 2013

      Jase’s Challenge

      First published in Deeper Magic: The First Collection

      Edited by Jeremy Whitted

      Amberlin Books 2003

      Día de los Muertos

      An original Cael and Jake story from The Anointed series

      New edition 2014

      Fallen Warrior

      The Eaglekin series

      First published 2011

      A bit from Clover: The only thing these stories really have in common is that they each feature a soldier/warrior who has no quit in him. Actually this guy does want to quit several times, but his resolve holds out. Do Not Resuscitate is a story that has seen many transformations. This is one of the oldest and one of the ones I like the best. It ultimately became a 60,000 word young adult book titled Extraction about a teenage girl who has her soul stolen, rather than an old WWII veteran as in this original version. But I still like this version and thought it had a place in the universe.

      ~~~

      Do Not Resuscitate

      When Mike Matthews took the eggs out of the fridge, he had no idea he’d be dead in twenty-three minutes. Or that the biggest adventure of his life was beginning.

      Where the hell? Sprawled across cold uneven gravel, he squinted up at orange streaks of tracer bullets, whizzing across a darkening sky. Pounding crumps of distant mortars rattled along his skull. He’d know those sounds anywhere. Flashback? PTSD episode? Hadn’t had one of those in decades.

      The last thing he remembered was breaking his morning eggs into the sizzling pan—the same pan he’d been using the past thirty years that Sabrina said should be thrown out—and a terrible pain in his chest.

      The pain had subsided, had actually shifted downward. Groggily, he sat up. What in all…?

      He wore dark fatigues, steel-toed boots. His shirt was torn and dirty, shredded at the left pocket. Pulling aside the stiffly dried material, he frowned.

      Two tiny punctures marked his highest ribs. He’d seen too many bullet holes at Guadalcanal to not know what they were. Dried blood stained his skin in light swirls where someone had attempted to mop it away. He’d been shot in the chest?

      No, not his chest. His pulse banged in his ears, drowning out the stuttering of artillery. This was not his chest, not his body. He stared at his shaking hands, blunter, wider and darker than his own. And much younger. No wrinkles sagged vein-edged flesh that molded upon each knob of bone. Some sort of wiry bracelet shone around his wrist, hot. It steamed in the balmy night air. Just a dream then. This was all just some really vivid dream.

      Hushed voices called to one another, stilling Mike’s heart. Footfalls scraped over stone and gravel as shapes of men moved toward him from the darkness.

      This couldn’t be real, could not be happening. He must be flat on his kitchen floor, suffering from the blasted coronary Doc Burke had been warning him about, and having the mother of all hallucinations. And sure, why wouldn’t he dream up a war zone? Leave it to him to plop himself back to a place he had no unequivocal desire to relive. While he died like a putz in his kitchen.

      And who was there to find him? Shawn wouldn’t get worried for days, wouldn’t think to check on old dad for a while. He supposed the eggs would burn and at least send smoke through the house. Funny, he was more worried about how he’d be found than the actual possibility that he was dying.

      The shadowed men swarmed around him. Soldiers all, authentic from their dirty helmets, loaded ammo belts and rucksacks to the long rifles palmed in agile and filthy hands.

      But that’s where his imagination must have taken a crack in the head.

      Mike stared. Sickening dread curled around his gut as long golden eyes peered at him from a lean face streaked with dark grease. Certainly a hallucination. Who had eyes that color? And those thin slashes of skin at either side of his neck, like gills on a fish. He usually dreamed in bold and vivid strokes, but this took on an entirely new clarity. A new intensity.

      The soldier spat out a tangle of incomprehensible words and slapped a helmet onto Mike’s head. That felt real enough.

      Others crowded around him, patted his leg, inspected the bullet wounds. Each had those same skin flaps at their necks, and eyes of too vibrant shades, violet, silver, seafoam green, that shimmered like jewels beneath the war-lit sky.

      In an unaware motion, Mike’s hand drifted to his own neck and found soft folds of skin there as well.

      Two more soldiers crouched low over an oblong machine, turning keys and punching buttons as it radiated a low hum that vibrated across his skin. A tool and dye man by trade, Mike’s interest perked up considerably at the sight of the machine, even one dreamed up in his own hallucination.

      Even so, he winced when one of the soldiers, frustrated and fuming in garbled tones, slapped the odd contraption. The soldier grinned as the machine blinked off. The man next to him nudged the soldier away and gently slid the thing down into his rucksack.

      One of the men closest carefully removed the steaming bracelet from Mike’s wrist and handed it to the soldier in charge of the machine. You got a name?

      Uh Mike, he answered numbly. Mike Matthews.

      Strange words were barked out, obviously commands, and Mike was hauled to his feet and pointed in the direction they were to take.

      So he ran with them, these unearthly soldiers, through concertina wire, and in and out of bomb craters, while the barrage-ravaged skies lightened to day.

      While Mike admittedly enjoyed running again with the loose rhythm and almost casual ease of youth, each stride taken also increased a snaking fear that this was a little too real.

      He must be in hell. Died on his sticky kitchen floor while his breakfast burned. That was all there was to it.

      His mouth went dry as he tried to think his way through this.

      Sietz, sietz! The soldier in the lead motioned everyone down. They all hunkered close to the ground under whatever cover was available while plumes of dust from what Mike guessed was a motorcade moved down a scraggle of road about one klick off.

      Whatever was real, or better yet, whatever wasn’t, the tension streaming off the soldiers surrounding him was an undeniable fact. Heart and mind racing, Mike watched the distant vehicles roll off while he hid behind a hump of soil far too inadequate for

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1